For the next few weeks, we will be looking at the Fruit of the Spirit (notice it is not "fruits" of the Spirit, as if these are all separate characteristics that we work on one at a time.) The fruit of the Spirit is the type of attitudes and behaviors you will see in yourself and other Christians as the Holy Spirit fills and empowers you...and them.

This week we will look at love and joy.

Love: in the original languages of the Bible, there were different words for love. Words like "eros," "phileos" and "agape." These are romantic love, friendship love, and sacrificial love. For our purposes, let's consider sacrificial love.

Agape is an opportunity to love others with the love of Christ. We become His conduit, so that His loves shines through us and to others. The wonderful thing about this is that it is not based on feelings and goodwill so much as an empowerment of God. That's a good thing, because quite frankly, sometimes people are hard to love! I bet each of us could think of at least one person that we find difficult to love. With agape, we can depend on God loving that person through us. If we surrender to what He wants to do, we can sense His help in demonstrating patience, kindness, and thoughtfulness to them even when they haven't done anything to earn it. This is essentially the love God shows us, because we don't deserve His love either.

Interestingly, living in agape love leads to the next fruit, joy. I'm sure you've heard the description of JOY being "Jesus, Others, You," in terms of priority. There's some truth to that for sure. I find that when I get self focused, my joy diminishes. When I focus more on God and others, I have more peace (oops, jumping ahead.) 

The Bible also tells us the "joy of the Lord is our strength." (Nehemiah 8:10) Joy, born out of thankfulness, fills our minds and spirits with new energy to handle what life has brought our way. Joy is more than happiness because circumstances are good. Joy is knowing that these circumstances will bring God glory, and in that we experience joy.